It wasn’t pretty, but the Stars did what they had to do last night. They beat an inferior Edmonton Oilers squad despite not playing their most efficient game. Dallas got depth line scoring in this game through hard work, a little luck and sheer force of will.

This was a pretty sleepy game all-around. Dallas never recorded more than six shots in any period and neither team reached double digit shots in any of the periods. The two teams entered the first intermission tied at 0-0 before Dallas finally cracked open the scoreboard with a very rare Radek Dvorak goal. Dvorak worked hard around the net and found himself on top of a juicy rebound which he promptly put in.

The Stars followed that up with an even rarer Tomas Vincour goal which I’m still not quite sure how it happened. Dallas had put the puck behind the net and Nikolai Khabibulin and a couple of Oilers defenders went to get the puck. Ryan Garbutt charged his way through and sort of ran into one of the Oilers defenders, who in turn crashed into the Oilers goalie. The puck snuck by everyone and found Tomas Vincour, who was literally standing one foot away from the goal. That had to have been the easiest goal of his career.

From then on, Dallas just held onto the lead. They kept Oilers away from the net and avoided the huge mistakes. Kari Lehtonen stopped nearly every shot that the Edmonton put on him. The Oilers broke Lehtonen’s shutout bid with only 30 seconds left in the game.

It was a game that Dallas had to, and was supposed to, win. They find themselves in Calgary to play the Flames on Sunday. A win for Dallas could then put the Flames out of the playoff race for good.

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Game Notes:

Shockingly, the Stars had no penalties in this game. Absolutely none. It’s only the second time all season that Dallas has accomplished that. It was particularly huge in this game because Edmonton has the best PP unit in the league.

Mike Ribeiro had his eight game point streak broken in this game. Trevor Daley also broke his five game point streak.

Michael Ryder extended his point streak to five games with his empty net goal in the third. He has a goal in three straight games and at least one point in 11 of the last 12 games.

Eric Nystrom set a new career high in points (20) with his assist in this game. Dallas still has a month of games to play so he could easily extend this.

Dallas only had 15 shots in this game, the least they’ve had in any game this season.

Edmonton actually had a lot of scoring opportunities, but took themselves out of those chances by bypassing shots or just plain not doing anything with the puck. It was quite bizzare.